How Traveling Makes Me the Person I’m Meant to Be
I didn’t always love traveling until I started finding pieces of myself in lands I’d never seen before
Traveling is the only way I know how to become who I am meant to be.
I haven’t always loved traveling. Growing up my family didn’t travel. I can count on one hand the number of times my mom went 50 miles further than the city she lived in her entire life.
My first travel experience happened against my will when I was 11 years old. My dad’s family was from Hungary, and he took my younger brother and me to meet them. As a child of my mom, to say that I didn’t want to go was an understatement.
I was too young then to appreciate what I saw in Europe. Still, it taught me one valuable thing: the world contained much more than I previously believed. I’d always thought everything in the world was like where I lived “downriver” in southeastern Michigan. But I’d been wrong. What else was I wrong about?
High School Travel
The only other family trip I recall was camping at a site half an hour from our home. Mom complained the entire time and vowed never to do it again. We didn’t.
In high school, I didn’t have money to go on any class trips or spring break, so it wasn’t until years later that I started to travel. It began small with a night or two in places common to Midwesterners — Vegas, Florida, and “Up North” to Michigan’s northern region.
In each new location I experienced, I realized that the world was more than I knew. Maybe I was more too? Or perhaps I could be. New places changed me, widened me, refined me.
I was finding bits of myself that I didn’t know existed.
Eventually, I started to think that if I could travel to enough places, collecting new pieces of myself, I’d become the person I was seeking.
It was in Mexico that the travel bug finally left its everlasting bite on me. While others lulled on the resort beach, sipping margaritas, and staring at the same bit of ocean, I craved exploration. I knew that Mexico must be a different sort of place too. I wanted to scour the streets, talk to the people, taste the food, and absorb their culture.
This feeling, once it came on, has never left me. This driving desire to know everything there is to know about a place, experience everything they have, understand their people and culture, to learn and create. To see who I am in those places.
If a place is known for surfing, I surf. Rock climbing, I climb, Hiking, I hike. Art, I admire and food I taste and languages I attempt to speak and local craftspeople I support as much as I’m able.
Each new place I visit teaches me something about myself
- In Colorado, when I learned to rappel down mountains, I realized that I am brave.
- It was in the jungle of Tulum, I met a Shaman and learned that I am more spiritual than I believed.
- In Arizona, when I hiked into the Boynton Canyon vortex, I learned that I am changeable.
- I learned that I am resilient in France. And figured out a complex public transit in another language.
- At a cheese farm in Amsterdam, I learned that I highly value natural products and processes.
- In Costa Rica, I learned to surf and realized that my age does not define my ability.
- At a hostel in Nicaragua, I accepted that time is the only time, and I don’t need to fret over it.
- I accepted that ghosts are real on a walk in Savannah, Georgia.
- Aliens saw me in Sedona, Arizona and made me question all my beliefs.
These things have opened my mind and changed me for the better. Knowing that there are thousands of places I have never been, I wonder, how many pieces of me are out there? How many can I find?
Where I Travel
I love to visit places known for history and outdoor activity: mountains, oceans, and wide-open spaces. Also, I have a deep love of cities and architecture and art museums. I almost always travel solo and try to find a physical activity or art to enjoy. It may just be a bike ride, a hike, a museum visit, or a walking tour. It could be surfing, or climbing, or trekking through a jungle. The goal is to do something I’ve never done before.
I don’t do luxury travel (only because I can’t afford it), but I’m also not a budget traveler, though I try to save money whenever possible to travel more. Places I stay need to have basic comfort and general amenities. If there happens to be an infinity pool, well, all the better.
In planning, I like things a little rough around the edges and not too rigid. I create plans and then I toss them to the wind in favor of spontaneity, for that is where adventure lives.
How I Travel
Sometimes my travel is limited when I work full-time in one location. Other times, like now, I work remotely and I am on the road traveling, exploring full-time. Currently, I have a small van and I’m traveling around the United States, renting small spaces by the month.
I love nothing more than a good travel story and use my blog to share mine. I try to write to take you with me and give you tips and ideas for your travels. But most of all, I hope to inspire you to find a little bit more of yourself too. Who knows what we’ll find? We can only see that looking back.
Tell me, what have you learned about yourself from traveling?
Follow me at www.middlejourney.com to read more about my travel experiences.
